Thursday, April 16, 2009

It seems more and more these days, we're seeing really solid bands on late night TV. We have no idea if this is because we're watching more late night TV, or if the situation has improved in some way. In either case, we're not complaining: it's great to be exposed to solid, new, live music in glorious HD. Case in point: Cursive.

The band played David Letterman last month (above) and delivered a totally show stopping performance of "From The Hips", from their new record Mama, I'm Swollen. To be frank, we had enjoyed little-to-no exposure to the band before this performance, and it totally won us over. Put differently, the ol' Tivo is not allowed to delete this clip until we say so, which is probably never.

The band's sound is a refreshing blend of raw rock and roll and finely tuned instrumentation. Their live sound is startlingly tight, and the performance above almost seems like it could be a studio take. Undoubtedly, the band owes more than a little inspiration to Modest Mouse. That being said, they manage a degree of melody and composition that is wholly their own, and awesome to boot. It was certainly enough to get us to go out and grab the record.